Fresno City Councilmember Miguel Arias chastised businesses for not supporting the wage theft resolution Thursday, Feb. 1, 2024.

Fresno is now the first city in California to take on wage theft cases.

The Fresno City Council voted unanimously Wednesday to authorize City Attorney Andrew Janz to establish a dedicated division in his office focused on prosecuting wage theft cases involving Fresno employers.

The move is made possible by Assembly Bill 594, which went into effect at the start of the year and authorizes a public prosecutor to initiate civil or criminal action for wage theft violations, or to enforce those provisions independently until Jan. 1, 2029.

Councilmember Mike Karbassi successfully motioned to move up the sunset date of Fresno’s program to 2026 to determine the results.

Janz said his office could start pursuing wage theft cases in the city by April 1.

The wage theft program will be modeled after the city’s Eviction Protection Program, allowing workers who feel their wage protections have been violated to report the situation online.

Maxwell said they are going to pursue employers that are already in violation of certain labor codes and will take on new cases reported by employees.

Employers committing wage theft could face fines of $10,000-$20,000 and possible jail time in the most egregious cases.

“We will not be coming after small, mom-and-pop shops that make honest mistakes,” said Maxwell. “We will use those as educational moments for this, folks. Who we will be coming after are the Bitwises and Cheesecake Factories of the world who lie and cheat their employees out of their hard earned money.”

He said they will only be moving forward on cases that are clear and evident examples of wage theft.

Councilmember Miguel Arias called out the Fresno Chamber of Commerce for opposing the wage theft program — and named off more than two dozen other local businesses also in opposition.

Arias said the Chamber lobbies to hold retail or car thieves accountable, but not employers stealing from their workers.

“This 129-year-old organization across the street [from Fresno City Hall] continues to operate as if this was the 1940s and wants us to continue to hold and carry the water of corporate interest at the expense of workers,” Arias said.

According to GVWire, the Chamber endorsed Maxell for his run for city council re-election and reported that it threatened to withdraw Maxwell’s support. 

Scott Miller, CEO of the Chamber, said he is disappointed by the words of some of the city council members for what seemed like an exaggerated response to a reasonable opposition letter. 

The Chamber wrote a letter of opposition to Mayor Dyer, City Manager Georgeanne White, and the city council members.

“We are concerned that introducing another layer of bureaucracy at the local level, particularly in a
system that already provides significant challenges to even the most conscientious businesses can
only divert scarce city resources away from other important issues without necessarily adding any
tangible benefit for those it is intended to help,” Miller states in his letter. 

Miller said that the Chamber wanted more time to review the resolution and to have more input from the business community. 

He said that the state already has robust enforcement system for wage and hour issues, primarily through the Private Attorneys General Act. 

Miller said that all members of the Chamber are against wage theft, and that the existing regulatory landscape is effective at identifying and punishing employers violated Labor Code laws. 

“The City doesn’t need another level of bureaucracy to address that [wage theft],” Miller said.